Clinton Campaign Wants Cryptocurrency without Bitcoin’s Liberty …

You might assume that someone that is willing to violate her own government’s cyber security regulations and communicate via a private homebrew email server just to avoid legally-mandated public scrutiny would appreciate Bitcoin’s focus on privacy, but Hillary Clinton’s team thinks otherwise. Newly leaked Clinton correspondence from WikiLeaks shows that her campaign saw the benefits of cryptocurrency but had antipathy towards Bitcoin.

John Podesta is the Chairman of Clinton’s campaign. He previously served as Chief of Staff to her husband and as Counselor to President Barack Obama. After being introduced to an altcoin called Ven in May 2015, Podesta passed along the information for another member of the team to check, adding that: “I don’t send all the crazy ideas I hear about at fundraisers your way, but this seems interesting and legit. Essentially digital currency with a green angle as opposed to bitcoin’s libertarian Ayn Rand schtick.”

Ayn Rand was a thinker and novelist whose philosophy of Objectivism can be considered to be promoting an extreme form of individualism (as opposed to socialism). While there is no connection between Bitcoin and Rand the roots of the cryptocurrency are of course deeply planted in a community of privacy-activists, libertarians and even anarcho-capitalists.

The Ven promoter (Stan Stalnaker) wanted Clinton’s campaign to use Ven to enable single click micro-payments and other fundraising activities for the campaign. “As we discussed, Bitcoin is being used on the Republican side and could be a useful tool, but we think Ven is a better choice for your campaign due to its environmental benefits, identity metrics and closed loop status.”

It is still unknown if Goldman Sachs or any other of the major global banks that paid Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech wanted to pay her using Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, but new leaked emails are coming all the time, so stay tuned.